Aces or first bases (let me have more for less)
by The Readers Muse
Summary: Only distantly, between the warmth pooling in his gut and the burn in his throat, he wondered what that said about him. About them. That it wasn't the bullet he would have taken from Harry – but the crime.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own "Kingsman: Secret Service" or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

 **Authors Note #1:** This is my first work in the fandom so I am mostly just testing the waters. This is set directly after the end of the movie/extra scene during the credits.

 **Warnings:** Light Hartwin elements, could be termed pre-slash, canon appropriate violence, hurt/comfort, a wee bit sappy to sooth my emotional wounds and not brit-picked.

 **Aces or first bases (let me have more for less)**

His ability to cope with everything the universe threw at him with a smile and a right proper swagger that went aces with the suit Harry had made for him lasted up until they landed and Merlin ordered him to go home and get some rest.

Coming back to Harry's quiet little house was a mistake, he realized. Standing sickly-still in the threshold, breathing in the man's familiar smell. It made his fucking head spin. And not in a good way. Least not anymore at any rate. Because Harry was gone. Dead. And all the wishing in the world wasn't going to bring him back. Not this time. He might have saved the world. Saved his mum and Daisy and everyone he might have passed on the way to the pub on a Friday night. But honestly- other than that, he was mostly just stuck on the one life he _hadn't_.

The princess had been a distraction.

A brilliant one even, completely lovely.

Everything a proper spy movie should have to curve it off before the credits.

But it was _Harry_ that'd gotten under his skin.

Harry he wanted.

Harry he'd lost.

Everything else seemed to pale if he was being square with himself.

He shuffled inside reluctantly, locking the door behind him with a soft _snick_ of metal on metal. Unable to make himself turn back around towards the hotel he'd slotted Mum and Daisy in for the night. Not wanting either of them to come within five feet of Dean ever again – especially not after the stupid wank and his boys woke up from the beating he'd given 'em at their local.

He'd had vague plans when he'd walked up the quaint stone steps and used the key Harry must have had slipped into the breast pocket of his suit after it was made to let himself in. Plans like taking a month long holiday on the floor of Harry's stupidly red study. Plans like telling the rest of the world to sod off and to leave him the fuck alone. Plans like dealing with this like _Eggsy Unwin_ rather than the posh, stiff-upper lipped Kingsman agent he'd somehow managed to become. Plans that involved Harry's extensive liquor cabinet and not much in the way of thinking at all really.

Instead, he stumbled up the stairs, ignored the clear invitation of the guest room's open door and collapsed face first into the primly made sheets of Harry bed. He didn't even make it so far as taking off his oxfords. Too busy digging his fingers into the plush duck-down as something in his hind brain curled out. Bleeding pain and contentment like it was all one animal at the idea that both the first and the last thing he'd be breathing - now and come morning - would be Harry.

* * *

He slept for eleven hours.

Woke up feeling like he'd gotten hit by a lorry.

Took a piss.

Ignored the blinking light on his phone.

Made what was probably the worst breakfast Harry's kitchen had seen on record.

Washed up after himself.

Binned his ruined tie.

Grabbed the newspaper from the stoop.

Shrugged out of his suit jacket.

Stumbled back up the stairs.

Stuck his head in the bath until there were no more ghosts haunting the insides of his eyelids.

Toed out of his oxfords.

Stripped down to his briefs.

Ignored the blinking light on his phone for the second time.

Then crawled between the sheets properly this time around.

Breathing in deep and greedy until sleep rolled in to claim him.

He didn't dream.

At least not really.

Either way it was a near thing.

* * *

He was still feeling a bit like he'd woken up on another planet by the time he polished off the last of the Chinese Roxy had arranged to be delivered after he'd finally caved and told both her and Merlin to sod off after they switched from trying to reach him on his cell to calling Harry's disgustingly ancient looking land line.

He wasn't exactly sure what he was doing when he poured himself a drink – scotch on the rocks from a bottle that looked like it'd cost more than Dean's paycheck and his Mum's unemployment combined – and settled himself behind the desk in Harry's office.

"To you, bruv," he offered after a handful of minutes. Extending a sloppy salute to the ceiling before taking a drink. Voice cracking just enough for him to grimace at it as he sighed and booted up Harry's laptop, hoping for a distraction.

There had been so much left open - _possible_ \- between them.

 _Surrogate father figure._

 _Mentor._

 _Brother in Arms._

 _Friend._

 _Something more?_

It was all a bit more than a little fucked up.

He groaned, hindsight was the fuckin' worst.

* * *

He'd barely opened a tab to check his email when a red-coded text box popped up on the screen. For a long second all there was just a series of fluctuating code, then- _Subject: Termination of Agent Galahad. Downloading all stored files to Kingsman-HQ_ _mainframe. Do not turn off your device. Secure connection established. Download 0.124% complete._

Something in his stomach flip-flopped unpleasantly. _An entire career worth of files._ Well, he supposed it was official now. Like the universe was nudging him into facin' the music a couple inches at a time. He squeezed his eyes shut. Content to let everything drift until the transfer was complete, only to have them pop open a second later when something _bleep-bleeped_ from the speakers.

It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. Most of it – documents, blue prints, and mathematical equations - flicked past too fast for him to really see. But the pictures? Well, they were a different story. Like image downloads everywhere they took a bit more time, and they were all of Harry.

The first few were to be expected, Pre-Kingsmen, clearly taken covertly by whatever Agent had decided to recruit him. A couple of candids mostly, a much younger Harry Hart walking down the street, looking posh with a popped collar and a forest green polo. Still carrying a bit of teenage lankiness to him despite walking with the same confident gait he recognized just a little too well.

 _Download 2.34% complete._

Harry perched on the bank of a river, idyllic and alone, reading from an old looking tome with his chin tucked into the curve of his elbow. Harry bare from the waist down with a couple days' worth of rough on him. Hair everywhere and bleeding crimson from his nose as he held a pair of taped up hands in front of his face in a make-shift boxing ring - college crests and colors clear in the backdrop. Harry taking a hit. Harry ducking. The fourth snap caught him in mid-lunge, predatory and overeager as his opponent's face blurred ripples as the blow landed.

Harry wearing dog tags and a tan t-shirt at some sort of pub, havin' a pint with a bunch of regular blokes in fatigues – military basic training. Harry at the shooting range, carving a hole in his target that would have made his old CO weep with pride. Harry nicking his father's Jag for a spin, splashin' muddy water over the polished sides before another series of pictures showed him picking up a pretty girl on the side of the road in the village and taking down the roof just for the pleasure of it as they sped through the countryside.

 _Download 4.54% complete._

He snorted into his glass when the next set of photographs showed Harry tossing the bird at the unseen photographer, lip twitching up – barely there in the corner of his mouth – as something gave the agent away and suddenly the next three photographs are blurred right to shit. A chase probably. If he knew Harry at all, he figured the man probably hadn't made it easy for him. Still, it was somemat' that'd probably ended just the way the Agent choose for it to go, hands full or not despite Harry makin' him.

Because that was the thing, wasn't it?

This was Harry _before_ the Kingsman.

Before he'd been trained up.

Before he was Galahad and all the fancy polished shite that came along with it.

It wasn't until his glass touched his lips that he realized he was grinning in spite of himself. Harry might have been born with that silver spoon up his arse but it weren't who he was. Not really. Not like Charlie and Arthur and those blokes that couldn't tell their arsehole from the horizon. On Harry it was just a layer. A part of a bigger whole.

 _Download 8.16% complete._

He put his glass down untouched as the next series started to download. Finding an odd sort of familiarity in it as old, black and white security footage showed Harry doing laps around the manor with a pack of potentials. Harry in the water test, swimming strong for the shower heads, helping three, no- four of the others get the hoses around the u-bend of the loos before jamming his own in. Harry's triumphant grin falling in fractions when the test finished and the sodden body they'd all swam past without seeing – a young bloke with ghosting, ginger-red hair – slumped supine across the dripping tiles.

It was like seeing double in the worst way.

He shook himself free from the memory as the download started to speed up, mission files flicker-flashing past like blinking. Video footage of Harry picking Mr. Pickles from the lot of cages – the smallest dog there like it was nothing. Like he'd been born to make the long shot work out somehow. Harry doing push-ups on the lawn. Harry shooting a grenade launcher like it was nothing as he absorbed the kickback without even so much as flinching.

Harry free-falling through the air, holding onto the last person – who probably figured they didn't have a chute if it was the same old test – closer than a lover as he brought them down neatly within the circle. Harry knocking back champagne like he'd been drinking it from the cradle, already the running favorite for their mark's affections as he managed to sweet talk the rough looking man in the leather jacket with inch long studs into a corner for a snog before the drugged bubbly laid him out flat.

 _Download 10.2% complete._

The photos changed after that, skipping ahead until Harry was suited up and wearing the Kingsmen glasses. Looking brilliant and sure and a hundred shades of someone he would have literally killed to know as the man was caught in still motion, mid-exhale. Leaning up against a brick facade, a long, fancy lookin' fag caught beautifully between calloused fingers. Cocky and posed in a very Harry way.

He caught himself, fingers inches from the screen. Wanting touch. To re-connect. To save this one little bit for himself like the selfish prat he was. Wanting to keep this bit safe, even from Merlin before the moment was lost and the picture blinked out just all the other ones.

His swallowed, throat tight with misplaced grief as the images on the screen were replaced by mission files, loads and loads of them all flashing by faster than the eye could see. How many years had Harry been doing this? He hadn't even bothered to ask. He'd known him long enough that it should have come up, but it hadn't. Why?

 _Download 16.8% complete._

 _Download 22.3% complete._

 _Download 31.2% complete._

* * *

He grimaced at the burn as he knocked back the rest of his scotch in one go.

 _Bollocks._

He'd made a right mess of himself, hadn't he?

Having regrets and whatever?

He looked around the room, eyes blurry with the threat of angry tears as the framed headlines sheened back at him mockingly. Monuments to a lifetime of sacrifice never to be acknowledged or congratulated. That was how they were going to bury him, wasn't it? How Harry's death was going to show up in the society pages. Just another empty, pretty little lie.

 _Did he have family?_

 _Friends?_

 _Did they know?_

 _Did they know what he'd done?_

Strangely enough it hadn't bothered him when Harry had showed him these, gently teaching him yet another lesson. That there would be no medals. No recognition. No nothing. It weren't what he wanted for himself. But when it came to Harry? When it came to the idea of standing beside a plain black coffin as some priest droned on about a simple, unremarkable life? Well, it was like ashes in his mouth.

He leaned back in his chair, curbing the urge to haul back and throw the glass across the room just to hear it shatter. _Had Harry regretted it?_ Or had he known the moment he'd stepped out of that church - reeling and still half-wild - that his number was up?

Harry had felt it, what had happened – what Valentine's chip had made him do. He knew that much. Seen it for himself. Harry had looked around himself like he'd woken up in the middle of World War III, only _he'd_ been the weapon that'd gone off. Taking everything and everyone with 'im – without his consent – only to rise blinking like a child in the ashes.

That had been the worst part.

The realization.

He wasn't sure how, but if he could had saved Harry from anything, it would have been that.

Only distantly, between the warmth pooling in his gut and the burn in his throat, he wondered what that said about him. _About them_. That it wasn't the bullet he would have taken from Harry – but the _crime_.

* * *

 _Download 58.7% complete._

He wanted a do-over. A second fuckin' chance.

He wasn't about to lose the plot or nothfin' it was just-

 _It weren't fair._

He knew it sounded juvenile and he knew what Harry would say, but it was what it was.

He couldn't help the part of him that felt cheated.

But that was the thing, wasn't it?

This wasn't that type of movie, was it bruv?

' _But it could have been,'_ a part of him whispered. Sulky and longing and a hundred different shades of a hundred different emotions he wasn't sure he'd ever be ready to face down. _'It could have been.'_

* * *

 _Download 76.8% complete._

 _Download 77.0% complete._

 _Download 80.3% complete._

 _Download 85.1% complete._

 _Download 90.2% complete._

 _Download-_

 _Download canceled._

 _Reversing transfer._

He nearly fell clean off his chair.

* * *

By the time he'd snapped his mouth shut, jaw lax in surprise, the computer had gone blank. Screen dark, like a shut down despite the fan humming like white noise in the background. He blinked, hands curling around the sides of the laptop as a cursor blinked white in the center, swallowing hard and nearly forgetting to breathe as the seconds lengthened and-

… _.Manners._

It was only one word. _One fucking word_. But somehow it still came out admonishing – familiar. Half-baked in honest laughter and bubbling amusement. And the only thing he could really think of was-

 _Harry._

Beside him, his phone rang shrilly. Catching him off guard enough that he fumbled to answer, picking it up without thinking as the fake name Merlin had given him as a contact flashed urgently.

"Eggsy-" Merlin started.

But he was already there. Spinning in the office chair and staring at the computer screen with a stupidly big grin he was halfway sure was going to split his bloody face right in two. Watching the text flash, prim and proper and cheeky and everything he'd come to associate with the stupid man he'd honestly thought he'd lost forever.

"I know!" he trilled, hearing Merlin click-clacking at his keyboard like God himself had his soul by the strings.

"It's Harry, he's-"

" _Alive."_

* * *

 **A/N #1: ** Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think! Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – This story is now complete.


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